Asian studies minor launches with new Luetkemeyer Chair professor

This fall, Goucher College will launch an Asian studies minor focused on that region’s history, politics, and philosophies. The interdisciplinary minor will explore a broad Asian region, extending from India through Malaysia to Japan, and include a study abroad experience. 

Complementing this new program is the recently hired Luetkemeyer Chair professor, Yu Chih (Clay) Chou. The John A. Luetkemeyer Sr. Endowed Chair Fund was recently established under the ongoing [UNDAUNTED] comprehensive campaign and is a newly endowed professorship in Mandarin Chinese and Asian studies at the college. 

“The Asian studies program and the Luetkemeyer professorship are important strides in our continued emphasis on the importance of global education,” says Elaine Meyer-Lee, Goucher College provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. “The new Asian studies minor builds upon Goucher’s commitment to global learning and will offer our students valuable intercultural experience with and understanding of this influential region to best prepare them for careers in the global economy. Teaching Mandarin Chinese will also let us serve the greatly increasing numbers of high school graduates who have studied the language and want to continue.”

As a distinct pillar of a Goucher education, global learning is woven throughout the interdisciplinary curriculum and co-curricular experiences. The Asian studies minor offers courses related to the cultures, histories, economics, international relations, and politics of the different regions of Asia, as well as the Chinese language. Classes include The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Modern China, The Samurai: Myth and History, Democracy and Violence in Southeast Asia, Chinese Philosophy, and Political Islam. The minor offers students various study abroad experiences, including semester-long and Intensive Course Abroad programs throughout the Asian region, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Yu Chih (Clay) Chou, the newly appointed Luetkemeyer Chair professor in Mandarin Chinese and Asian studies, will teach in the Asian studies minor. At Goucher, he is also an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. His current research focuses on modern Chinese literature and its cultural production, with special interests in the modern conception of children and its related evolutionary and eugenic ideas and family reform discourse in the context of the Chinese nation-building project. Chou’s general academic interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, visual media, popular culture, biopolitics, and gender.  

For more information on the Asian studies minor, visit https://www.goucher.edu/learn/undergraduate-programs/.